Mike Doughty

Mike Doughty

"Mike Doughty" (born June 10, 1970), is a singer and songwriter. He led the band Soul Coughing in the 1990s; in the 2000s, he forged a successful career as a solo artist.

Doughty was born in Fort Knox, Kentucky. The son of a military family, he moved around the country and Europe, and spent his teenage years living on the grounds of the United States Military Academy at West Point until he attended Simon's Rock College of Bard. He eventually moved to New York City to study poetry at the New School University, where singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco was one of his classmates in Sekou Sundiata's poetry course, "The Shape and Nature of Things to Come."

In 1992, Doughty, then a doorman at the New York avant-garde club The Knitting Factory founded Soul Coughing (billing himself then as "M. Doughty"), and enjoyed the minor hit singles "Super Bon Bon" and "Circles".

Wearying of the band and addicted to heroin, Doughty broke up Soul Coughing in 2000, and was promptly dropped by Warner Brothers. A few years later, he beat his addiction and started touring as a solo artist. He drove around the country in a rental car (9000 miles on his first tour), playing acoustic s...